Response #2: Watching Reformers Unreform:
And reformers can be undone by machines, when they trade their aspirations for power:
I voted for John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary - I bought the line from McCain of reform. At the time, he might have meant it, and I could easily see what a mess that Dubya could be. What I didn’t realize then and I sure do now is that McCain has become so focused on becoming President that he would do or say anything to get the prize.
He’s gone on about the corrupt nature of Washington politics - and his entire campaign staff is top-to-bottom filled with lobbyists of the ugliest stripe who have sold the wishes of despots, dictators and big business to Congress and the White House.
He says he’s for the elimination of earmarks and for experience in government, and selects a small-town mayor and recent governor whose major talent was knowing who and when to suck up to to get what she wanted - and one of the biggest pigs in the trough of earmarks, corrupt fiscal practices (like getting per-diem extras when she’s at her own home) and driving her small town into huge debts for a politically popular sports arena. She’s not a reformer - especially with her performance in Troopergate, where she’s flipped back and forth between going along with the investigation and trying to torpedo it with help from McCain, it’s obvious to me that she’s corrupt through and through, willing to do whatever to get wherever.
And to get all those goodies for Wasilla and Alaska, she’s had to be in bed with the corrupt Republican machine in Alaska - Stevens, Young and the lot. And unlike Obama, she’s actively rolled in the trough since the day she became mayor, and went for more. Some of her earmark stunts were ones that were specifically pointed out by McCain as egregious pork - and he had the nerve to turn around and point to her as an earmarkless reformer with results. Hey, I seem to recall that Bush used that line against McCain in 2000 when he thought he could get somewhere against him with it!
And finally, for a real idea of what McCain stands for - he stands for whatever gets him in. He fought torture issues against Bush - until he caved. He fought for the environment - until he realized that it wouldn’t play with the fat cats. He reversed himself on every significant difference he has ever had with Bush, especially over the last four years. And then he hired as his main campaign operative the same guys who promoted in 2000 the stories that McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was actually a bastard child from some black woman he had an affair with. At the time, I was torn up for McCain, and hated the Bushies for their calumny. If McCain’s willing to hire that crew to get him elected, he’s willing to do *anything* to get elected. And if you add in crap like ‘Obama wanted to teach kindergärtners sex before they could read,’ I feel that McCain is a worthless, lying piece of crap that would do anything to get power, and has lost all of the reforming spirit and honor that he ever had in the process.
Joe Klein of TIME Magazine put it this way:
Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists-including me-for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.
Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won’t abet its spread by linking to it, but here’s the McClatchy fact check.
I just can’t wait for the moment when John McCain-contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat-talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.
There is a corrupt Republican machine in Washington, and it controlled the Congress and the White House for the last eight years, give or take, and it has thrown this country into a grinding, endless, needless war that is costing nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq, while Osama Bin Laden is forgotten in a house in Pakistan, laughing at them. It has plundered the public pocketbook for pork and largess for big oil and big business, and forgotten that government is the servant of the people. It has more than doubled the public debt, massively raised the deficit for our great-grandchildren to pay, and ruined the lives of millions by letting big business and big finance loot the public on wild crap games and then come for public bailouts after they’ve crapped out.
Inflation, the price of energy, the cost of living, the rate of unemployment, the death toll in war and the quality of life in America have all taken a dive, and Bush was complicit in it all. When disasters came, he had inexperienced cronies in charge who ran up the bills for the benefit of other fatcats while doing little to seriously help anyone. And they made an utter mockery of the rule of law - ignoring it as it suited them, and using it to punish political enemies.
The only people that the corrupt Republican machine in Washington did anything for was their own incompetent, greedy crowd. Those people scare me, both from the greed and the incompetence part. And McCain is using their PR people and flacks and connections and policies to get elected, with only token ‘trust me, I’m still a maverick’ statements to the independent, reform minded people in this country to get them to vote for him. He has utterly sold his soul to the company store.
(more coming)